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 * Our goal with our Professional Learning Community to effectively integrate Web 2.0 tools into lessons or units of study from 1st - 8th grade. As we designed these lessons we focused on merging 21st century standards with state standards for the various grade levels and subject areas.**

**Please click into each page for detailed lesson plans and student work samples. Additionally, below you will find a list of our favorite web tools along with summaries giving you the best ways to start using them in your classroom right a way.**
 * __Tricks of the Trade: short summaries on how to use the best Web 2.0 tools __**


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 * Wordle ** is a tool for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to ext. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. One thing about Wordle images: they cannot be saved. You must either print them immediately or take a screen shot and save them as a .jpeg. We do not recommend that students be allowed to browse the g
 * How can I use Wordle in my classroom? **
 * Word Chunks: (i.e. –an pan, man, fan, etc.)
 * All About Me or All About My Family
 * Character Traits/Analysis
 * Synonyms (for those over used words students use when writing)
 * Vocabulary/Terminology
 * Word Poetry
 * Parts of Speech, Rhyming Words, Descriptive Writing

Sharing them is a cinch as well. Add them to your class blog, wiki, e-mail them to friends, put them up on a YouTube or download them onto your computer. Before using Animoto in the classroom, you will have to register. Animoto offers several pricing options for the average consumer, but educators get an all access pass, worth $30 a year, for free. This will allow you to create an unlimited number of online slideshows that are not restricted in length. So, to get started, you need to click here to get to the Animoto for Education sign up page. Fill in your name, grade level, email, and school on this page. Animoto will vet your details and send you a confirmation email to activate your education class account. This may take a week or more, so bear  this in mind. Share the activation link you get with your students so that they too can sign up. Please note that students under 13 have to be using teacher created accounts. This is for the safety and security of your students. Animoto recommends you use some fake email accounts from gmail to create generic student accounts of your own for them to use. Once Animoto sends you a class code then you go to education page sign-In using the fake gmail account and code. **<span style="color: black; font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif'; font-weight: normal;">Create a password for example using your school number and mascot name is a good password to have for the kids. **
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 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Animoto **<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';"> produces TV-quality music videos using your chosen photos and music from their extensive library. You can resubmit your photos as each will receive a totally unique video each time, no two videos are ever the same.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">[] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">This is an easy site for 1st graders (or higher) to create a 3 to 4 panel cartoon strip complete with characters and speech bubbles. It is quick and easy to demonstrate. Options are few but adequate. <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">No account necessary – can handle many students online at the same time.
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Make Beliefs Comix **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Idea: **<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';"> Have students first fill out story board of three /four squares so they have an idea of what their cartoon strip will contain – rough draft without details. Have them write out the dialogue and help them with spelling of words on their sheets. You cannot save these, but they print well. Make sure students fill out their names on the strips. Great for beginning, middle, end discussions. I read a graphic type picture book to show students a professional version and model my own rough draft and comic strip. They love it!! Can be done in two 45 minute classes or pass on the modeling and draft and let them go for it.

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 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Tikatok **<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';"> - This website is free to write books and read books that other kids wrote. There is a small fee if you want to buy a hardcover of your book. You can illustrate your own story by mailing in your illustrations or use the Tikatok gallery to find pictures others have submitted.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">[] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">**Jogtheweb** - This site is free and easy. It allows you to string several websites together. You can have all the web sites for one project in one place. It works well for teachers teaching a lesson or for kids to follow on their own.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Image Loop <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">You need to set up an account, but students can all use the same login and password (you don’t need separate accounts). Make sure students name their slideshows – they get saved under your account so you can go to imageloop and view all your students’ work. Slideshows are easy to edit and easy to save and embed the code.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">[|www.glogster.com] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Glogster - To register must have an email account. It is easiest to make one account and let students log on with the same password and username. Students need time to experiment with the various tools and play with it before finishing a full project. Also students must have experience with uploading pictures. It is very similar to some of the online comic making tools. Finally the entire glog doesn’t fit on the screen so students must scroll down to use full page.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">www.wikispaces.com <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Wikispaces - To register must have an email account. It is easiest to make one account and let student log on with the same password and username then make each student their own page. When students post on a discussion have them type their name in the subject field. Make sure students use the edit button on their page to work and not the edit navigation button at the end of the page list bar. Use Mozilla when working on wikispaces.

[|www.blabberize.com] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">How can I use Blabberize in my classroom? · <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Animal Research · <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Life Cycles · <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Biographies · <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Author Studies
 * <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Blabberize **<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">is a free tool that makes images talk. The kids love it! Get a G Mail account so your personal account isn’t used. Then set up your Blabberize account. Use something easy for the kids to remember. You need to teach the kids how to save an image as a JPEG. A safe place to find images is Pics4learning.com. After they have an image, go to the Blabberize site. It will walk you through making the mouth move, and recording. When you have a finished product, it gives you a web address for the finished product. It will also give you the HTML code to add them to a web page. You might want to review the sample on the site before showing it to the children. One of the animals says he peed his pants because the blabber was so funny. You might want to hand select a different sample by browsing the samples kids have made. We haven’t been able to do this on MAC computers. PC’s seem to work fine. Occasionally there have been problems with the wireless network.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">[] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Vocaroo – easy podcast tool for primary students. You do not have to have an account to use this tool. Simply log into the site and start speaking. Students can immediately click on ‘listen’ to hear their recording. Then they can record again. If you want to keep the recordings then you will need to set up an account using your email address. The recordings stay on your account until you delete them. This way they can be imported onto a web site. Great tool for improving fluency.

<span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">[] <span style="font-family: 'Arial Narrow','sans-serif';">Big Huge Labs – This site has many different activities to pick from, but the two best are the magazine covers and the trading cards. You will need to set up a free education account. You can then import the students and the web site will create individual log in cards for each student. Student will need to have their photos already saved, along with their paragraphs. Once they have completed their project they can save them.

[] Prezi is a great way to create presentations AND you can give people editing rights so multiple people can work on the same Prezi. Prezi is a web-based presentation and storytelling tool Instead of a set of slides, it uses a single and links various elements. Text, images, videos and other objects are placed on the page and grouped together in frames t can play manually or automatically.

**Other important web sites for more information on Information Literacy and Technology lessons:**

http://iltworkshop.wikispaces.com/09-10+PLC+wikis

http://k12libraryresources.wikispaces.com/

list of Web 2.0 tools

Jog the web of web tools

How to do Web 2.0 toolshttp://www.prezi.com